Birds! We love birds, and they are especially exciting to see in the winter time. The Northern Cardinal has always been a favorite of mine. In fact, we recently made bird feeders to try to attract the birds to our yard this winter. We also really enjoy watercolor and trying out different watercolor resist techniques, so we used wax paper resist to make the tree have a really neat texture. I think this textured winter tree craft with the sweet little cardinals turned out really pretty.
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Materials needed to make this winter tree craft with kids:
The wax paper resist is optional if you don’t have access to an iron or if you’re doing this with a class full of children. It’s just the method we used this time, but there are other ways to do it, or you can simply skip the wax paper resist part of it and paint the tree. You can use glue or white or brown crayon to draw a bark texture on the tree as well. You can even combine different resist methods! Maybe crayon for bark, and glue for swirls in the clouds?! Or maybe glue bark and doodle white crayon to make clouds in the sky?! It’s fun to get creative with it!
>>Click here for how to do the wax paper resist, or see other methods to try<<
- white paper
- brown crayon
- watercolor paint (brown, blue, purple, white)
- white paint
- paint brush
- red construction paper
- scissors
- glue
- Materials for the resist method(s) of your choice
We used waxpaper resist this time. Click the photo below to see how to:
How to make a winter tree:
Place hand near the top middle of the paper and trace with a brown crayon.
Do a resist method on top.
Paint over the tree with brown watercolor. Watery watercolors usually work best to make the resist show up better.
Doesn’t the texture look awesome?!
Paint the sky with wintry colors like blues and purples. We added white watercolor to the top to make it look frosty.
Use white paint (not watercolor) to make snow on the ground and on the branches of the tree.
Cut out two bird shapes from the red construction paper to make cardinals. We used a marker for eyes and a beak.
Glue the cardinals onto the branches of the tree.
Enjoy your beautiful winter tree and cute cardinals!
A Book to Go Along with your Winter Artwork:
I LOVE the book No Two Alike by Keith Baker. We were originally going to make one red bird, but we decided to make two after we reading this story. It’s such a great winter read for kids!
Pin this Winter Tree Craft for Later:
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